Tagged Questions

{tex-core} is for questions that are independent of formats and macro packages. Such questions usually relate to low-level TeX programming or the behaviour of TeX at an underlying level. Note that even Plain TeX is a format in itself; for questions about it, use {plain-tex}.

Tex (and LaTeX) mix programming elements with typesetting ones. It's often confusing to a beginner to tell them apart. Could anyone show me a list of the very core commands of TeX (and perhaps LaTeX) ...

Once in a while I try to understand how TeX works... Hitherto now success,
but sometimes I manage to define a macro. For example,
\def\appendto#1#2{\expandafter\def\expandafter#1\expandafter{#1#2}}%
...

With pdflatex, can \openout handle a filename with a space in it? (We're using MiKTeX and our users seem to think it's clunky to restrict them in this way. We also have tons of legacy TeX files and ...

I am working on typesetting an Indian text in three languages using ITRANS + XeTeX. I have pasted an example below. How do I avoid having to repeat the text for getting three different outputs. Can I ...

Many years ago, probably in TUGboat, I saw
a shortish piece of
\TeX\ that immediately deploys catcodes and very quickly becomes
completely unreadable, but when typeset produces the old "twelve days ...

I would like to generate an autmatic table using loop. As suggested here before, it is best to first generate the lines in a toks and then pass them to tabular. However, I have problems with accessing ...

I've had trouble finding easily accessible information on what exactly the ampersat does in TeX- it seems to be used frequently in the implementations of the commands I use, yet I've never had to use ...

How would I go about implementing a function in TeX to add an arbitrary number of numbers? Reading through the \def notes, it seems it can only take up to nine arguments. How would I make a function ...

I have been using LaTeX professionally almost every day for almost 10 years, so I think I can say that, by now, I more or less know what I'm doing. I also do a lot of ordinary computer programming, in ...

Can someone figure out a conditional \end or \bye in TeX-Code? (plain tex)
I want to put in several lines into a TeX-file, each ending with \end , to be compiled before the document is complete, to ...

I have lot of confusion regarding TeX and LaTeX. What I have understood is TeX is basically macro instructions, and LaTeX uses that macros or we can say TeX is extended to LaTeX.
But, really not very ...

I'd like to test if the last paragraph has any overfull line.
The naive approach of looking at the \badness once the paragraph is finished does not work, as it will only give the badness of the last ...

I would like to employ TikZ for some constructive work, namely, programming a FabLab laser cutter. This nifty device gets a 2d drawing (as PDF) and cuts along all hairlines in the PDF. A harline is ...

This is a follow-up to tohecz's question, which I'm asking at the suggestion of Mico.
The original question asks how to discover the hyphenation points for particular words, and the answers explain ...

I'd like to write some simple macros for handling things like cross-reference, to use them in plain TeX. (I know there are already macros devoted to this, like the ones present in Eplain, but I would ...

When is it necessary to use {} to squeeze an argument to a command?
Example:
In TeX we see a lot of calls like \vskip\onelineskip
while this macro (\vskip) is defined to take one argument.
Would it ...

I'm trying to understand why some entries in a table of contents are overfull even if a sensible break points exist. I pulled down the problem (and the definition of \@dottedtocline) to this example:
...

(TeX-Code!)
I have defined a TeX-macro to compare date and time values. Everything works well, until I put in \the\day, to call the current value of it. Can someone imagine, why this works with all ...

I have several equivalent systems of linear equations that the following code displays. I would like to have them vertically aligned at the equals signs. I found the following code on this web site ...